CSU proposes two large parking garages south of campus

Construction would accompany shuffling other facilities, including the Plant Environmental Research Center.

Nov. 11, 2013

A cyclist and a skateboarder head west on the newly rebuilt portion of the Spring Creek Trail just east of Center Avenue on Sunday. The land behind them is owned by Colorado State University, which is proposing to build two parking garages, athletic fields and a ropes course in the fields. The trail used to cut through the middle of the property, and the trail relocation opened up the space for possible development. / Trevor Hughes/The Coloradoan

This map shows parking garages and new facilities Colorado State University has proposed to build south of Prospect Road in Fort Collins. / Courtesy of Colorado State University

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In what would be a significant move south across Prospect Road, CSU is proposing to build two large parking garages, athletic fields, a new ropes course and a plant-research complex off Center Avenue.

The “Bay Farm” project would be linked back north to the main campus on the other side of the Hilton Hotel via a pedestrian underpass. University officials say the development is not directly connected with the proposed on-campus football stadium a few blocks away, but acknowledge the additional parking would be useful on game days. They say the garages, with space for thousands of cars, would primarily serve the growing campus and the nearby MAX bus rapid-transit service.

The university’s governing board has given CSU officials authorization to pursue the Bay Farm project, but it still requires final financing approval. University officials characterize it as an “exploration” of options.

“Regardless of the stadium, those are still interesting sites for us for parking. We would pursue it in the same manner, regardless of whether the stadium goes forward,” said Amy Parsons, CSU’s vice president for operations. “If the stadium project goes forward, they would be nice to have; (but) any parking that we build would be useful on game day.”

The $43 million Bay Farm garage project envisions twinned parking structures with a combined capacity of up to 2,400 cars. The garages would be built in the vacant fields behind the Hilton, in space opened up by this fall’s redesign of the city’s Spring Creek Trail.

Because the area is in a floodway, CSU is limited in what it can build there. Regulations generally bar buildings such as offices, shops or homes from being built in floodways, but parking garages are allowed.

Headed south

Prospect Avenue has long been the primary south boundary of CSU’s main campus, although the university already has a ropes course and a small student-housing project, Aggie Village South, just south of the road. CSU also owns the land upon which the federal buildings and labs farther south sit, along with the veterinary school campus near Drake Road.

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The CSU Board of Governors last month approved what’s known as a “program plan” for the Bay Farm project. That step gives Parsons and her staff authority to develop more detailed plans for the $43 million project, including how to fund it. CSU would still need specific approval to move forward with construction.

In its initial proposal for the project, Parsons’ staff said it hoped to have the first parking garage and the Prospect underpass finished three years from now, including an 18-month city and federal permitting process.

“The proposed Bay Farm parking garages are intended to serve Colorado State University faculty, staff, and students, with potential hourly visitor parking on the second level,” university officials said in their plan. “In addition, the parking garages will provide event parking for special events.”

The garages are just one piece of a plan to redevelop the area south of Prospect. The university’s governing board has also approved a program plan for a $7.3 million partial relocation of the Plant Environmental Research Center into that area. PERC today sits north of Lake Street and west of Meridian, squarely on the proposed stadium’s footprint.

Under the plan, the PERC greenhouses would move off the stadium site, to land now occupied by a ropes course south of Prospect. The ropes course would then move east across Center, adjacent to the parking garages and new sports fields. CSU’s plans show several fields, two for soccer and one for lacrosse.

In discussing the $7.3 million PERC relocation, President Tony Frank specifically said the move “does not endorse the potential new stadium.”

One reason CSU picked the stadium site is that it requires removal of only one set of buildings: PERC.

Planning for parking

CSU faces a parking crunch, with or without the stadium. But the stadium, which would be built atop what is now a parking lot, could exacerbate parking problems during game days. Stadium critics who live in the neighborhoods south of Prospect worry fans will jam their residential streets with cars during games, blocking their access and harming their quality of life.

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With or without the stadium project, CSU is aggressively adding more students as it expands its current enrollment of 31,514 students to a goal of 35,000. All those students, and the professors, instructors and support staff necessary to serve them, will require new residence halls, classroom buildings and other facilities. In many cases, CSU is tearing up parking lots to make space for new buildings.

According to its projections, CSU will lose about 2,300 parking spaces on the main campus during the next five years as new buildings replace undeveloped space or parking lots. CSU today has about 12,500 parking spaces, with about 9,900 of them on the main campus. Housing projects planned for that main campus are expected to add about 2,000 new beds during the coming years.

Frank called the university’s current parking landscape an “unsophisticated” mishmash of service lots and a limited number of parking permits.

“That approach ... that won’t work for us,” Frank said last month.

The four-story Bay Farm garages would have space for up to 2,400 cars, depending on requirements for federal and city floodplains. During the 1997 Spring Creek flood, massive amounts of water backed up in that area before bursting beneath the BNSF railroad tracks and inundating a now-removed mobile home park on the east side of the tracks. Under floodplain regulations, no one would be allowed to park on the garages’ ground floors during flood season, CSU said.

Parsons said it is CSU’s growth and the MAX project that are primarily driving the garage plans. She said consultants haven’t yet developed a plan for how to meet the proposed stadium’s specific parking and transportation needs during the six home football games it would host each year. The university’s initial stadium consultants specifically identified the Bay Farm area as a prime location for game-day parking.

“What we do (at Bay Farm) might be helpful on the six days, but that’s not how we’re structuring our parking and transportation plan,” she said.

As part of the approvals for the Bay Farm project, CSU’s governing board also approved a “program plan” for a separate $50 million parking garage near the intersection of Shields and Laurel streets. CSU is also investigating whether it could or should sell portions of its parking facilities and concessions to a private contractor in return for a large up-front payment.